I'm glad you made this thread. I was thinking about asking you about your experience with this stuff since I saw you post something about it in another thread. All of this is very interesting.

I've been keeping a dream journal for a while now, and what you've said about it is correct. It doesn't take too long before recall gets better and you start to recognize the themes, both of your current life-situation and all-encompassing ones. Sometimes it can be quite frightening to discover what's actually going on deep in your mind.

Tarot decks have always interested me. A few months ago, out of nowhere, I got the idea to get one, and I'm still itching for it. I'll to try your method out when I finally do.

This was very helpful. Is there anything else along these lines you could share?

Try explaining this to them and they flip shit. They (unsurprisingly) just can't understand that the their ideology is the same as the people they claim to hate. That's another thing too. They'll never admit that they need something to hate, more so than their opponents, to feel good about themselves.

I never looked at it that way before. I'm just a few years into recovering from a victimized teenage liberal mindset. I used to believe ruling over something must immediately equal oppressing it. Obviously, there is a way to guide and rule others without violating their existence.

Humans are very practiced, though, at interpreting everything, to make things mean whatever they want things to mean. Is Christianity to blame, or just humans, generally?

Spot on. I'm still not the biggest fan of Christianity. When I read a passage like that, I'm the one who wants the Bible to disagree with my views just so I can find fault with it. Very flawed way to look at things.

Really? You dont understand it at all? If he was my brother I would be incensed beyond reason and wish the death of the bear despite knowing all of this rationally. That is what we are. You may ignore it, but surely you understand it?

When you put it that way, yes, I get it. I was thinking about it in terms of following through with those feelings of revenge, not just experiencing the feelings themselves.

Animal testing is always done in the name of 'progress', on way or the other.

If humanity as such was really interested in life, I don't think we would spend so much energy trying to escape it's dark sides, disease, death etc. We would instead give them meaning.

That being said, I am grateful for some medicine, even though I am very rarely ill. But our species as such overdoes it to the extreme.

I think the widespread animal testing is a symptom of a bad collective attitude.

How do you feel about the bible's take on this? Genesis 26 says "Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'"

Do you think this verse influences our bad collective attitude against animals and nature in general, and why most western people don't give a thought to animal testing? I don't mean to sound antagonistic here. I know you're a Christian, and you seem much smarter than most Christians I've ever met. I'm genuinely curious about what you think about that.

Just because I didn't say anything about the dead guy doesn't mean I don't care about him. Timothy Treadwell was a bit of a fruit, but he seemed like an honest, genuine human being, and cared deeply about the bears that he lived with.

That's the part of the story that got me in. It's that he's not any smarty-pants, just an average everyday fool that against the most unlikely of circumstances, managed to find a way out of the cesspit the rest of the world is drowning in. No amount of intelligence makes up for the mental strength required to do that.

I know where you're coming from there. I admire people who do this, even if they are a bit nutty, or even if what they're doing is a bit stupid. I feel the same way about Christopher McCandless. Yeah, he had no idea what he was doing and it got him killed, but he knew there was more to life than day-jobs and television, so he went seeking it. He tried, which is more than what 99.9999999% of us can say.

But I do know if Treadwell was my brother I would be hankering for a bear pelt... Curiouser.

I just can't wrap my head around that. What would that accomplish? You said you feel more for the bear than the person, so why would you kill one? It isn't like the bear would understand the idea of revenge like a human could.

A tattoo to me is like something etched on to say, a pristine natural landscape. No matter how tasteful it is, it wears on the senses like an alien thing. So no, and no.

This is amusing to me, coming from a user calling himself trystero. I have the muted post-horn tattooed on my arm.

Tattoos aren't too bad, but with everything these days, everyone goes overboard with them. I only have the one. It can be seen when I wear short-sleeves, but it's fairly innocuous. It took me almost two years to finally decide to get it. For most other people though, it seems as soon as they get the idea for one, they make the appointment immediately. I know a guy with a ridiculous sleeve tattoo, including a koi fish on his forearm, a lobster with a crown on the underside of his forearm, and on his bicep/shoulder he has an octopus wearing a top-hat and a monocle. I just don't get that. Most people are acting out or trying to be "unique" when they get in to that territory.

Tradiddle: I think you've just had really shitty luck. My mom has around seven or eight tattoos (entirely too many for a fifty year-old woman, but anyway) and they all look very good, including her portrait tattoo. Most artists can't do portrait tattoos, and when they do they're awful. Her's looks pristine though. She's had a different artist for nearly each one as well, and only had a problem with one of them. You definitely ran into the wrong people. Especially the guy who got pissed because you were talking to him. I talked to my tattoo artist the entire time she was working and she didn't have the slightest problem. Sounds like that guy was just awful and he needed an excuse.

Just because I didn't say anything about the dead guy doesn't mean I don't care about him. Timothy Treadwell was a bit of a fruit, but he seemed like an honest, genuine human being, and cared deeply about the bears that he lived with. I think it's very sad that he got killed by something that he loved so much. I still don't understand why they had to kill the bear though. They were so far away from anything resembling civilization that it probably never would've had the chance to kill another person.

When a dog like a pit-bull or rottweiler goes off and kills the neighbor, I can understand why it would be put down. As you said, they have to co-exist peacefully with humans, and when they violate that relationship they become a threat. I guess my frustration is directed at the people whose immediate reaction is "a person died!? WORST THING EVER! KILL THAT ANIMAL AND SHOW IT JUSTICE!", instead of giving it any thought.

And I definitely wouldn't lead a bear holocaust if one of my loved ones was killed by bear, no more than I would lead a pool holocaust if one of them drowned.

That's a great documentary. Werner Herzog is one of the greatest artists of our time. All of his other ones are just as good as that one.

And it reminded of something I was thinking about a few days ago: why the fuck do people kill animals (especially wild ones) that kill humans? Do they seriously think they're subject to man made laws? Do they think that the animals aren't acting off instinct, but actually plotting murder? That pisses me off like none other.

We can, but hatred is difficult to keep in check. Anger is loss of control and ultimately fear is the primary underlying emotion at work. Better still is to identify the reason why we hate. The dysfunction of this current world runs so deep there would be no end to the amount of hatred one could feel if they were to give in to it. It's also not physically good for the body. I try to bypass this emotion at all costs. Avoid contact with anything that triggers my non-constructive self. Easy trap to fall into though.

Insecurity leads to fear, and fear to hatred. To be mastered, or fallen prey to. Great comment!

That is a great post, and I agree. I know all to well the process that hatred can unfold in a person. I experienced it as a teenager and am just now recovering from it. It's perfectly summed up in crow's comment. Within the context of this thread, though, I don't think it is that big of a deal. Post shitty music, laugh about it, and then go about your day. No harm done, really.

Alright, I watched 43 seconds of that first video and that's all I'm willing to waste. My question: Truthfully, what is so bad about this? Do you identify at any level with the people who make or enjoy this music? Do you have high expectations of them? Does this music have any influence on people that you care about? Or is it just an encapsulated representation of the hateful things that humans do generally? Clearly you are never going to get around to suicide if this is your main reason; I can give you some more substantial reasons if you are interested.

The suicide part was definitely hyperbole. For the most part, it's just an encapsulated representation of the hateful things that humans do generally. It pisses me right the fuck off. I think it's mainly just because I'm young, and there are two main points to that: 1) that thing that calls herself Lil' Debbie is hardly a year older than me; it's disgusting to see my generation sink so low and get rewarded for it, and 2) I still have some teenage hatred floating around in me. When I see something I hate, I really hate it, with every fiber of my being. I have a feeling that when I'm older and I see things I don't like, I'll be able to shake my head, brush it off, and go about my day. I do that for the most part now. It isn't like I walk around all day and just think about how much I hate dumb white slut rappers. I just posted that shit here because that's the point of the thread.

I think the largest problem in music of the heavy metal type today is the lack of will to actually sit down and interlace conceptual theme and form into the music. People are no longer interested in using the mediums of music to translate conscious ideas. I can't even begin to count how many times I roll my eyes when a band introduces every song and the subject matter is only about the expression of some emotional discontent.

This. After listening to metal nearly exclusively for the past two years, I've realized the reason I love it so much is the way the form, tone, atmosphere, lyrics, etc., of the song/album all come together to express one fully developed idea. You don't find that in rock or pop or rap or nearly any other genre of music. I don't think it would be possible to do that in those genres either because their compositional scope is so limited. Beyond using a major key for upbeat songs and a minor key for sad songs, there is no way to relate the GCD chord progression to the content of an artist's lyrics or album.

If bands would try to bring this idea back to their music, they might get somewhere. As long as they're focused on wankery, sentimentality, or any other superficial bullshit, well, it becomes just that: wankery.